BanklessDAO Project Revenue and Ownership Discussion - DRAFT 1

Not sure how Bankless Consulting works. 10% seems like an agency type model to me.

I have suggested a crypto-native venture model.

The DAO and Guilds have to compete with other VCs to get deal flow from the best teams.

One of the ways they can provide value to those teams is a preset template for launching a projects.

The template includes solutions for the DAO receiving governance rights and monetary remuneration in exchange for the funding.

Right now, from my understanding, for many projects, the DAO does not have those assurances.

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Rotorless, I love your idea for establishing a risk framework.

I would think that this framework should be installed at the Grants Committee level for their portfolio of investments.

For individual contributors, I bristle at the idea of having them post collateral. It is hard enough to get new people to work with a bounty system.

Come to the DAO where you have to put money down upfront to work for us is a tough value proposition to me.

I do think that individual compensation decisions should be held at the project level.

Hi and thank you. I love the opportunity to throw ideas around.

The posting collateral idea is to demonstrate that there are ways for the treasury to grow that do not involving scalping, and to push us to think wider. Iā€™m not proposing it as a solution now.

What pops into my mind about people not willing to post collateral lays down a bit of paradox: the exact same people will go down the road and ape into to another protocol and stake tokens at higher risk, exposing them to unseen risks for uncertain rewards, but not invest in themselves with a sure predictable payout for their own work.

Another thought is a way to test the posting collateral idea is to do it on a pilot/trial basis within a subgroup. IMO wholesale changes to compensation or governance should be trialed before wide implementation, something currently not done.

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@rotorless I agree with you.

Weā€™ll probably find the best answer to compensation with many small experiments held at the project level.

The DAO could ideate and offer alternative compensation models for projects.

It could even collect some data and analytics to provide recommendations on what works and what doesnā€™t.

The DAO could choose not to fund projects based on compensation models even.

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I love the conversation here. Another thing I think is relevant to this conversation is roles one general. To retain talent I think we need to think about salaried positions rather than roles. Iā€™m just thinking here but my reasoning is that I personally have no desire to campaign for myself each season to be voted into roles. Having no job security beyond a season at a time might be fine for now but as we get more established this will become more problematic for retaining high performing talent. Iā€™d love to hear others thoughts on this.

By your own definition, if thereā€™s no risk in making a risk framework, then thereā€™s no reward ;). I only bring this up because I wonder how applying a risk framework in our funding process would actually look. I assume itā€™ll narrow our focus - will we be able to set what level of risk weā€™re comfortable with as a DAO?

My worry comes from losing an experimental, discovery mindset that comes from endlessly chasing KPIs. In graph theory, a function (line) can have multiple peaks, some much smaller than others. The short peaks are local maxima and and the highest peak is the global maximum. Applying this to a product solution space: can we be aware of our risk without locking our teams into a local maxima solutions?

I completely agree with this and wonder if itā€™s really that difficult to issue governance tokens earlier in the process? Looking at VC funding as a model, BanklessDAO could be exchanging BANK for project governance tokens at the time of funding. If this isnā€™t easy to do with current tools, maybe itā€™s something we should build.

Hi Links,

Thanks for your comments. Let me try to add some clarity to my post:

Blockquote

By your own definition, if thereā€™s no risk in making a risk framework, then thereā€™s no reward ;).

Blockquote

I apologize if I did not choose my words carefully. ā€œThere is no downsideā€ was meant to communicate there is no drawback. I have gone back and edited my post.

Blockquote
My worry comes from losing an experimental, discovery mindset that comes from endlessly chasing KPIs

Blockquote

KPIs:

There is no mention of KPIs in my post or intention to suggest so. There are many enterprises that develop a strategic plan and KPIs without articulating a risk framework. IMO KPIs are measurements that can measure goals of strategy implementations, however risk framework (which can be an element of a larger strategic planning process) is not what KPIs measure. KPIs can also exist without risk frameworks- we just call them dashboards in web3 - 404: This page could not be found

Emergence:

IMO emergence is not synonymous to boundary-less experimentation and discovery or the absence of constraints or process. We will all die at some unknown future moment is something we can agree on, and that we are constrained by this framework and we must accomplish any experiment and discovery within that constraint. In the same vein, a risk framework is the constraint that together we agree upon to enable the discovery and experimentation to horizontally bind our DAO culture.

GC:

At the GC level a risk framework would enable the relative weighting of dissimilar projects from dissimilar guilds to one another to make informed decisions. It would also enable informed general voting by providing information about the DAOworthiness of one proposal or project next to the other.

Process:

IMO we are learning that we spend too much effort voting on projects as opposed to voting on processes. The analogy I have been using for years is about building a car: If we dump the parts to a car in the middle of a table and tell the people to build a car - it likely wonā€™t be a very good car. If instructions are provided that constrain assembling one part/section before the other, the outcome is substantively different. That risk framework enables them to build, then to iterate observations into the next car. Same goes for building your house - a risk framework will conclude wiring before drywall. BY analogy, in the present model we find ourselves voting on if we should build a wheel without knowing if we will build a car.

IMO risk frameworks do not kill emergence but rather they group the ideology and cultural norms of the DAO. As the DAO scales it becomes more evident that it is a key for ensuring that emergent contribution and member pathways remain in service of the DAOā€™s ethos and mission. It enables horizontal collaboration and multiplies power in the system so we can create what we need to create without running on a bureaucracy and permissions. It is the nuanced difference between agreed constraint and permissions. Ultimately, a proven risk framework could enable the dissolution of the grants committee and further enable decentralization and move projects and guilds towards permissionless self-organizing without requiring unity in internal processes and structures across them to meet their needs.

100% this. Until the bDAO mission (and endgame) is clearly defined how can we decide what support should be given to projects and what the expected/required returns are?

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Awesome write-up @Icedcool and @hashedMae . I appreciate the 3 options shown here for the various projects coming out of BanklessDAO.

Thereā€™s a lot of food for thought here for the various projects to consider.

One perspective iā€™d add to this conversation is from the perspective of BanklessDAO, itself.

Given that BanklessDAO will be providing much of the initial support, whether Incubator, Department or Subdao, I wonder if it makes sense to consider not just the financial ROI, as youā€™ve illustrated here with various % of revenue kicked back up to the DAO.

But also to consider from a meta-governance perspective. I can see BanklessDAO ($BANK) token playing a meta-governance role in these various spin offs, particularly Incubator and Subdao options.